


The Twain Together

by SegaBarrett



Category: Bates Motel (2013)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon References - Incest, Canon References - Suicide, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-14
Updated: 2017-12-14
Packaged: 2019-02-14 15:02:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,359
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13010301
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SegaBarrett/pseuds/SegaBarrett
Summary: Alex came home a little earlier than planned, and everything went off the rails.





	The Twain Together

**Author's Note:**

  * For [musikurt](https://archiveofourown.org/users/musikurt/gifts).



> Disclaimer: I don't own Bates Motel, and I make no money from this.

It would be easiest just to hate him. Norma had told him all he needed to know in order to hate him, after all – people would probably strangle their brother-in-law for far less of a reason than the one he held over Caleb Calhoun. The revelation had shaken him when Norma had told him it; tearful and ashamed. He’d hated anyone who could make his beautiful wife feel that way, and if he had been within arm’s reach of Caleb at that time…

What a funny thought, now that he had someone who was so much higher up his shit list. Norman Bates was in his every waking thought and most of his dreams, too – he was sure that if he just stepped a few inches closer, he could pull the man – the boy, the monster – into his embrace, his final embrace, and he could finally crush his windpipe.

He wasn’t going to be able to do it alone, however. He had tried to do it alone and he had come up against every single barrier that the universe could throw at him. He had dragged himself back from being shot; he was being hunted by people all over the state. 

So when he opened the window to Norma’s basement (it would always be Norma’s basement) and saw Caleb Calhoun chained to a pipe, he swallowed down the bitterness and slipped into the basement, knowing he needed to help him.

If anything, Caleb had loved Norma. A twisted, broken, horrible kind of love, but at least, this time, one that hadn’t killed her. Alex could live with anything but that – he could have lived with Norma brain damaged or missing a limb or horribly ill, as long as she was still there, as long as he could press his hand to her forehead and feel the way she loved to rub her hair against him, the way she loved him desperately.

He might not have recognized him. The man was curled up into a ball with his head half-tucked under his arm, and the slow, labored rise and fall of his chest was the only indicator that he wasn’t dead. How had he ended up down here, Alex wondered, was this Norman at work again? Apparently murder had not been enough; kidnapping was a nice cherry on top.

Alex couldn’t believe he had let Norman come home. He should have fought. He should have made her hate him, because maybe she would have hated him but she would have still been alive to do so. He should have come back to the house earlier.

Should have, should have, should have. Should have never talked to Rebecca and let her in, let the DEA ensnare him. Should have made every minute worth so much more than he had let it be worth. It would be easier to go through what he hadn’t managed to do wrong in the last two years then what he had actually gotten right.

He leaned in and pressed his hand to the back of Caleb’s neck. 

“Wake up,” he barked, harsher than he had intended. The man’s eyes slowly opened; Alex realized with a jolt that they were bloodshot and the pupils were dilated. There was dried blood caked across the man’s hair, as well – what had happened here? This was like seeing the sight at the Bates house all over again, the night he had arrived after Dylan had shot Zack Shelby. The murdered girl who had been held as a sex slave in Shelby’s house… 

Was that what this was? Or something far more disturbing, if anything could be?

“Who are you?” asked a dazed voice. The man sounded the way Alex had remembered him, raspy and confused, magnified now. 

“I don’t have time to give you a rundown,” Alex hissed. “I’m getting you out of here and then we’re going to deal with Norman.”

“Norman?” Caleb asked, “Norman’s crazy.”

“I’ve noticed.” Alex yanked on the handcuffs, trying to pull them off the pipe, and Caleb winced. Clearly this was not the first time this technique had been tried; Alex should have known better. He was too foggy, too drunk on revenge now.

He retrieved his gun, next, and the man’s eyes went wide.

“Wait… What are you planning to do with that?”

He lowered the gun, deciding that firing at the cuffs was just a good way to attract attention and probably to leave Caleb with only one hand. 

“I’ll need to pick the lock, I guess. Unless you know where he keeps the key?” Alex intoned, not putting his gun away completely just yet. If Norman came down those stairs…

And he found himself wishing that he would. He could fix him in his sites, then, squeeze the trigger and then…

And then what would be left to do? He couldn’t just walk back into prison, but he also couldn’t hope to have any kind of normal life now.

He’d have to cross that bridge when he came to it. That didn’t matter, now. 

“He’s… it’s at the top of the stairs, I think,” Caleb mumbled. “He tried to let me out once… He was going to let me out once.”

“What happened?”

“…She… intervened.” Caleb looked at him. “You know what he does? The way he… he gets?”

“I can imagine,” Alex replied. He walked up to the top of the stairs and yanked a set of keys off the doorknob. Too easy.

He slid the keys into the cuffs and uncuffed Caleb, dragging him to his feet and grumbling.

He was bleeding – slick on Alex’s palm as he brushed it over Caleb’s head – and Alex needed to get him out of here and back somewhere safe. Then he’d have to get back here and kill Norman for good. 

Was he stalling? Perhaps he was just stalling, trying to figure out what he was going to do – buying time for the moment. He had killed a lot of people, but never like this… Never like this.

“Let’s get you somewhere where you can recover,” he told his brother-in-law. Maybe he needed time to plan most of all.

***

“What the hell, Alex? Where did this man even come from?”

Maggie Summers was standing in front of Alex when he awoke, and she did not look at all pleased. 

“I agreed to help you,” she continued, “Why have you brought me another injured… somebody?” Regardless of her complaining, however, she had already bandaged Caleb’s head and was patching up the places on his wrist where the cuff had dug in too deep.

He owed Maggie so much. He hated that he had let Keith steal her life, her innocence, so many times over, making her complicit in every dirty, nasty thing he had been involved with.

Had Caleb been the same? Was he saving him just to send another Keith out into the world?

He didn’t have time to think about that.

“Whatever you’re planning to do now, Alex, don’t do it,” Maggie said, looking at him. “Who is this man?”

“I can hear, you know,” Caleb spoke up. “You don’t need to speak like I’m not literally right here.”

Alex rolled his eyes, ignoring Caleb.

“Patch him up… I have some things I need to do.”

Alex pushed past Maggie and rushed out the door, over again. He didn’t look back.

***

Dylan paced back and forth. He had made a mistake. No, he had made a hundred mistakes. He had let Caleb leave, he had let Norma stay. He had lost both of his parents and it had all happened while he wasn’t even paying attention; it had happened in a whimper and not in a bang and he had just walked or stayed or let it blow past him.

Emma was speaking, but he couldn’t make out what she was saying. None of it made any sense – Norma was dead? She had killed herself? That didn’t match up with the Norma he had left – she had been so headstrong and determined, maybe delusional about Norman but…

Norman. Norman had done it; he had done something to kill her at last, and Dylan hadn’t been there to save her.  
He would need to go back home. He’d see what was going on with Norman. He would get him back into Pine View and then maybe… Maybe he could go back to living his life again. It seemed pretty good, most of the time. Domestic.

It would still be there waiting for him.

He picked up the phone and dialed Norman’s number, almost hoping that his brother would not answer. If he didn’t answer, did that take Dylan off the hook? Then he could say that he had tried, that he had done all he could but that they couldn’t have expected him to go back there after all this time.

But he had gone there once, when he had nothing. Norma hadn’t wanted him there, but she had let him stay.

And none of it had meant anything at the end. 

***

Alex pulled a pair of dark glasses over his face and sucked in a breath.

He wasn’t going to live through this; why should he bring Norma’s brother into it? Was he determined to wipe out her entire family in one swoop with a scorched Earth policy that had no chance of working?

Maybe he could drop Caleb at the police department, and then Norman would be taken into custody. Holding someone hostage should be enough to get him thrown in and the key thrown away.

Even as he thought it, Alex knew that it would never be enough. He could never be merciful; not when it came to Norma.

He shouldn’t have been merciful when he was twenty-two, either. He had come home and found his father sitting at the table and he had told him…

He had been so calm. Alex had wanted to kill him. He had screamed in his father’s face and had tried to hit him. The man had taken his hands away and told him to sit back down.

He hadn’t even bothered to break a sweat as his ex-wife lay in a morgue with a bullet in her head. Alex had gone away to college and she had… just gone away.

And Alex hadn’t killed him. He had waited until they took him away in a police car.

He would not make that mistake again.

***

Dylan didn’t let Emma drive to White Pine Bay with him, and he wasn’t sure that had been the right decision. The drive was too lonely, too desolate, and he ached for Emma’s second-guessing chatter or Caleb’s stories about his weird friends in Costa Rica. Or even Norma’s criticisms. Had they even driven in a car together?

There were so many questions as he tried to rack his brain, making an endless list of all the things they had never done together or that he was unsure of – had they ever gone to a carnival or fair together? Had Norma read to him? Had she been proud of him?

Now, he would never know. What was he supposed to do with that? 

And he didn’t even know where Caleb was – did he know? Why hadn’t he called Dylan to tell him, if he had?

Maybe he thought that Dylan knew; or maybe he was pulling his Caleb running-off trick all over again, when Dylan needed him the most.  
He pulled over at a gas station and stepped out of the car, stretching his legs. Then he reached into his pocket and took out his phone, scrolling back through his recent calls and selecting the last time Caleb had called him. It had been more than a year and a half ago, and the number was international. There was almost no hope, and maybe that was what he wanted – to have said, again, that he tried, and then to throw up his hands and leave it all behind. Avoid the emotional upheaval and the mix of pain and joy that burnt through his ribs whenever he thought of any member of his family.

A few days ago he would have added, “except Emma”.

Now, she seemed cold… Ever since he had told her about what he had discovered about Audrey (maybe discovered… maybe she was just hiding somewhere, appearing and reappearing at will the way Caleb did), she didn’t seem to want to look at him.

He wanted to shout that he had warned her, he had told her. Had tried to send every vibe to tell her she needed to run far from his entire family, and she had stayed.

Her own fault.

But it didn’t feel like much of a victory to yell at a dead woman that it was her fault that she was dead. 

He wondered if he would ever feel anything other than lost ever again.

***

Caleb’s head was aching so hard that he couldn’t think. The only thing he could remember was Norma’s voice – but where had it come from? He could remember someone telling him something about Norma… something bad. What had it been?

Where was he?

Everything was a blur and everything hurt. He wondered if he ended up in some kind of a bar fight and had been left in a ditch – it wouldn’t be the first time.

“Don’t try to move too much,” a woman’s voice said, and Caleb turned his head up. 

He had never seen this woman before – she looked to be middle-aged, maybe, but something in her manner made her seem so much older. She seemed broken down, scared.

He had seen that look before when he was growing up, had seen it every single day. 

“Who are you?” he asked, wondering if it could really be her. How many more ghosts would he see today?

“My name is Maggie… I’m a friend of Alex’s,” the woman told him, then flinched away as if she expected Caleb to hit her. 

“Alex,” Caleb mumbled, trying to recall where he knew that name from. A moment later, he decided it didn’t really matter. “Where is Norma?” That was the only important thing; Norma, he needed Norma. He needed to make sure that she was okay and then he could leave again. As long as he knew she was out somewhere, on the other side of a phone call, a letter, a thought. He could pretend he was calling her, that they were friends. That he could drop over for dinner at his sister’s house and listen to her play piano.

They would get there, one day; they had to get there one day, didn’t they? It wasn’t possible that this was the way her story ended. Norma had always deserved so much more. He couldn’t have actually seen what he thought he had seen. It had to have been the blow to the head; it had made him hallucinate, made him see horrible things.

“Can you hear me?” the woman was asking him, and he wasn’t sure if he could.

“Maggie,” Caleb repeated. He would breathe; he would remember her name at least. Why did she have him here? Had Norman decided to sell him to someone else? That was all he needed. 

“You had a hell of a hit on your head. You shouldn’t go anywhere for a while.”

“I need to go see Norma…” Caleb whispered. “I need to go…” 

“I can’t keep either one of you in this house, apparently. But I can plead with you, at least, and try my best.”

“He killed her,” Caleb said quietly. “He killed her and he’s keeping her. How am I supposed to sit here and just live with that, hang tight and try not to get myself worked up?”

“What I want is for you and Alex to get patched up and get on with your lives. I don’t know anything about you, but Alex is a good man. He deserves better than what he got.”

“You’re in love with him,” Caleb told her. He knew that look well; the look of wanting someone who you can never have. The look of letting yourself fall apart inside rather than giving up.

She didn’t answer.

***

Dylan stared at the motel, feeling his heart drop into his chest. He had allowed himself to think that he would never come back here, that he would never remember all of the fights he’d had with Norma, all of the times he had thought his life would end before it had actually begun. 

The moment his entire identity had turned on its head, the words ringing in his head. The moments when Norma had wrapped her arms around him and they had surpassed those words for a few moments at a time; beautiful moments. Quiet moments.

“Dylan.”

He jumped when he heard the voice behind him. How was it that a man as awkward and lumbering as Caleb had managed to sneak up on him? His mind must be somewhere else, or maybe Caleb was just on his wavelength somehow. Maybe, if Dylan closed his eyes, it would come to pass that they were actually the same man, that all of Caleb’s sins had always been meant to become Dylan’s as well.

Dylan glared.

“Caleb. Where the hell have you been? You knew about this?”

Caleb shook his head.

“Not until… a few days ago.”

“Why didn’t you call me?”

He watched Caleb hesitate, then shake his head.

“It doesn’t matter. What about you? You found out, I guess?”

“Yeah… I hadn’t talked to her since…” Dylan didn’t bother to finish that statement. Since before she was dead, of course, in eighteen months at least, and he hadn’t realized – his heart should have skipped a beat, he should have felt different somehow, he should have known.

She was his mother. He should feel devastated.

He didn’t know what he felt. 

“So, what are you going to do now?” Caleb asked him.

Dylan had lost Norma forever. He would never have a chance to fight with her again, to ask her questions again, to love her again.

But Caleb was still there. 

“That depends, I guess. On you.”

***

Alex felt like the gun was weighing him down, keeping him firmly in place, guiding him. He would do this thing – this one, horrible thing that needed to be done.  
And then he could rest at last. Rest forever.

“You’re here.”

He was wearing her robe and a blonde wig. His hands were curled around a knife.

And he could see it. Caleb had been babbling before, and Alex had thought that he was crazy. But maybe they were all crazy – maybe, somehow, Norma had made them all crazy in the best and worst possible ways. 

“I’m here. It’s time for this to end, Norman.”

“Norman? Norman isn’t here. He’s sleeping.”

Alex gritted his teeth.

“You crazy son of a…” He wouldn’t finish that. “Come out and fight me for real. Don’t hide behind her. Come out and…”

Norman’s eyes flared.

“I never loved you, Alex. You only ever took advantage of me!”

He wouldn’t be – he wouldn’t be drawn in. He wouldn’t hear it being said not in Norman’s voice nor Norma’s but his mother’s, his mother’s voice yelling as she fell through space, fell away from him forever.

She had been so kind and giving and good.

She had been so broken and frightened, tearing apart as if she was clinging to a mountain in a storm – he could see her nails breaking, could see her falling. 

He’d tried to catch Norma but she’d fallen, too.

He missed her so much.

Maybe, Alex thought, he would just step into the light at last. 

His hand was wrapped around the gun and he raised it, putting Norman in his sights.

The room shook, as if from an earthquake.

“You wouldn’t do that to me, would you?” 

His hands wouldn’t move, like they were covered in little cuts, maybe little bites, places where things had been rubbed too raw. 

And then everything went dark, and black, and peaceful.

And Alex Romero was home at last.


End file.
